REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN
PRESENTATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM

The East Room

9:45 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning and welcome to all of you,
especially to the honorees, their family members, their friends,
distinguished members of Congress. The Presidential Medal of Freedom
is the highest honor given to civilians in the United States. It has
a special history, established 50 years ago by President Truman, to
honor noble service in time of war.

In 1963, President Kennedy expanded its purpose, making
it an honor for distinguished civilian service in peacetime. The 12
Americans we honor today embody the best qualities in our national
character. All have committed themselves, both publicly and
privately, to expanding the circle of freedom and the opportunities
the responsible exercise of freedom brings at home and around the
world.

In this time of change, where people's living patterns
and working patterns are undergoing such dramatic transformation, it
is necessary and fashionable to focus on new ideas and new visions of
the future. We are here today to celebrate people who have always
been for change, and who have changed America for the better, but who
have done it based on the enduring values that make this country
great -- the belief that we have to give all of our citizens the
chance to live up to the fullest of their God-given capacities; the
conviction that we have to do everything we can to strengthen our
families and our communities; the certainty that when the chips are
down, we have to do what is good and right, even if it is unpopular
in the short run; the understanding that we have the obligation to
honor those who came before us by passing better lives and brighter
opportunities on to those who come after.

This medal commemorates the remarkable service and
indelible spirit of individual Americans. But it also serves as a
beacon to all Americans, and especially to our children. For our
children, especially now when so many of their lives have been
darkened by violence and irresponsible or absent role models, the
robbers of innocence, of poverty and drug abuse and gang life, the
excesses of our modern commercial media culture and other forces that
are undermining the fabric of good lives.

All of these things require more and more people to live
by the values and measure up to the example of the winners of the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. They represent in so many ways the
true face of American heroism today.

Let me begin now by introducing each of them in turn.

As a young mother 27 years ago, Peggy Charren took a
good look at her children's frequent companion: television. And she
did not like what she saw. But unlike others who simply bemoan the
problem, she actually did something about it. She took a stand
against entrenched and powerful institutions in government and in
business and she made them listen. She started Action for Children's
Television. As a result, she uplifted the quality of what comes into
our homes and inspired a whole generation of citizen activists.

In 1990, the campaign that began in front of Peggy
Charren's television set reached Capitol Hill when Congress passed
the Children's Television Act. And, for the first time, the
television industry was challenged to fulfill its responsibility to
educate our children, not just to entertain them. Peggy Charren,
mother and now grandmother, leader and reformer in the best American
tradition, has put all of our children first, and we thank her for
it. (Applause.)

Now, I'm going to change the order here a minute -- just
a little -- and go to Joan Ganz Cooney. While Peggy Charren forced
television to change its ways from the outside, Joan Ganz Cooney did
the same thing from the inside. In 1968, she launched the Children's
Television Workshop and a whole new landscape of joyful education
opened up before our children's eyes. Out of this effort came
"Sesame Street," "The Electric Company," "3-2-1 Contact," and other
programs that enlighten not only our youngsters, but older people as
well. With a host of loveable characters like the Cookie Monster and
Big Bird, who became as familiar to me at one point in our family
life as the people I grew up with -- (laughter) -- these shows have
helped teach a generation of children to count and to read and to
think. They also teach us more about how we should live together.
We all know that Grover and Kermit reinforce rather than undermine
the values we work so hard to teach our children, showing kids every
day what it means to share, to respect differences and to recognize
that it's not easy being green. (Laughter.)

Joan Ganz Cooney has proven in living color that the
powerful medium of television can be a tool to build reason, not
reaction, for growth, not stifling, to help build young lives up
rather than tear them down. We all know that T.V. is here to stay.
Most of us, frankly, love it even when we curse it. But we also know
that there are clear, damaging effects to excessive exposure to
destructive patterns of television. As the Vice President and Mrs.
Gore have pointed out on so many occasions and as their recent family
conference on media and the family demonstrated, the numbing effects
of violence or the numbing inability to concentrate that comes from
overexposure to mindless, repetitive programming are things that we
have to fight against.

Peggy Charren sounded the alarm; Joan Ganz Cooney
developed an alternative. And even today as we grapple with this
challenge -- how to get the best and repress the worst -- we know
that we would be nowhere near where we are, were it not for these two
remarkable American heroes. We thank them. Thank you so much.
(Applause.)

William T. Coleman, Jr.'s, first public act to advance
equal opportunity came early in his life. He tried out for his high
school swim team, and in response, the school disbanded the team.
(Laughter.) For four decades -- in the courtroom, the boardroom, the
halls of power -- Bill Coleman has put his brilliant legal intellect
in service to our country. He was the first African American
accepted on the Harvard Law Review; the first to serve as a clerk on
the United States Supreme Court; the first to serve in the
President's Cabinet -- the second to serve in the President's
Cabinet; and the first to reach the pinnacle of the corporate bar.

As Secretary of Transportation to President Ford, he
helped to open the doors of opportunity to thousands of black
entrepreneurs. As a corporate director, he broke the color barrier
in the nation's executive suites. Today, as Chairman of the Board of
the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he continues the fight.

I have known Bill Coleman for a long time. I had the
honor and pleasure of being his son's roommate for a year in law
school. I think it is fair to say that the first time we saw each
other, he never dreamed that I would be here and he would be there.
(Laughter and applause.)

But I can honestly say, if you are looking for an
example of constancy, consistency, disciplined devotion to the things
that make this country a great place, you have no further to look
than William Coleman, Jr. Thank you. (Applause.)

Fifty years ago, John Hope Franklin was on a train in
North Carolina, jammed into a compartment reserved for baggage and
for African Americans. When he asked the conductor if he and his
fellow passengers could move to a near-empty car occupied by just
five white men, he was told it couldn't be done -- for the men, the
conductor said, were German prisoners of war. John Hope Franklin and
those with him were prisoners of something else -- American racism.

John Hope Franklin has both lived and chronicled the
history of race in America. He is the author of many books,
including the classic, "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of
African Americans." He provided Thurgood Marshall with critical
historical research for the landmark case of Brown v. Board of
Education. He has taught throughout America and around the world,
and he has influenced countless, countless students of the American
scene with his profound scholarship.

"I look history straight in the eye and call it like it
is," John Hope Franklin has said. This has meant telling the untold
stories of Northern racism and of slaves successfully striking for
better conditions under the sinful confines of slavery.

It has meant blazing a trail through the academy, but
never confusing his role as an advocate with his role as a scholar.
It has meant holding to the conviction that integration is a national
necessity if we are to truly live by the values enshrined in the
Constitution.

John Hope Franklin, the Son of the South, has always
been a moral compass for America, always pointing us in the direction
of truth. I think I can speak for Hillary and for the Vice President
and Mrs. Gore in saying that one of the most memorable moments of our
campaign in 1992 was having John Hope Franklin take a ride with us on
our campaign bus, and he sat in the front. (Laughter and applause.)

In 1944, at the age of 16, Leon Higginbotham arrived at
his midwestern college only to be pushed back by the icy hand of
racism. There, he and 12 other African American students were housed
in an unheated attic. Fed up with sub-zero nights, Leon Higginbotham
went to the university president to protest. "Higginbotham," the
president said, "the law doesn't require us to let colored students
in the dorm, and you either accept things as they are or leave the
university."

So Leon Higginbotham set out to change the law. He went
to Yale Law School, and after he was rejected by every major
Philadelphia law firm because of his race, he turned to public
service, working as a community lawyer and a state and federal
official.

When Leon Higginbotham was named to the federal bench at
the age of 36 by President Kennedy, he was the youngest federal judge
to be appointed in three decades. He served with distinction and
eventually became judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He
also found the time to write and speak with idealism and rigor on the
great dilemmas of race and justice.

His retirement has been spent remarkably -- helping to
draft the constitution for a democratic South Africa and teaching a
fresh generation of students at Harvard. We honor Judge Higginbotham
whose life as much as his scholarship has set an example of
commitment, enlargement and service to new minds at home, and now,
thank God, to a newly-free South Africa an ocean away.

Thank you, Leon Higginbotham. (Applause.)

Judge Frank Johnson could not be here today, and so had
to send the young gentleman to my left to receive his award for him.
He was advised by his doctor not to travel. I admire that doctor. I
imagine that he is the first person who ever got Frank Johnson to do
something he did not want to do. (Laughter.)

For his steadfastness, his constitutional vision, his
courage to uphold the value of equal opportunity, even at the expense
of his own personal safety -- for these things, we honor Frank
Johnson with the President Medal of Freedom.

During 40 years on the bench, Judge Johnson made it his
mission to see to it that justice was done within the framework of
law. In the face of unremitting social and political pressure to
uphold the traditions of oppression and neglect in his native South,
never once did he yield. His landmark decisions in the areas of
desegregation, voting rights and civil liberties transformed our
understanding of the Constitution. He fought for the right of Rosa
Parks to sit where she wanted on the bus and battled for the right of
Martin Luther King and others to march from Selma to Montgomery.

Armed with a gavel and the Constitution, Frank Johnson
changed the face of the South. He challenged America to move closer
to the ideals upon which it is founded and forever will be an
inspiration to all who admire courage and value freedom. We wish you
were here with us today, but his spirit is in this place, and we
thank him. (Applause.)

For a good long while now, Dr. C. Everett Koop, as
Surgeon General of the United States, and afterward as America's most
well-known private doctor, has told the nation the truth as he sees
it, whether we want to hear it or not. In so doing, he has saved
countless lives and left an enduring legacy of the doctor as a healer
in the broadest and deepest sense of the word.

Dr. Koop's life has been defined by doing the right
thing. He chose children's medicine for the simple reason that his
colleagues were ignoring it. He refused to let political
considerations leave Americans vulnerable to the epidemics of AIDS
and teen pregnancy. He fought for sex education knowing that if he
were to be true to the value of protecting our children, we could not
let them live in perilous ignorance. He told America that tobacco is
addictive, that it kills, and that we have to get cigarettes out of
our children's hands.

He helped us to come to grips with the painful
shortcomings in America's health care delivery system and what it
means for children that over 40 million of our people have no health
insurance. And we value his support for the action now being taken
to try to protect children's lives from the epidemic of smoking,
which embraces 3,000 of them a day and will shorten 1,000 of their
lives every day.

Dr. Koop's record is a priceless reminder that disease
is immune to ideology, and that viruses do not play politics. Over
the course of his career, I have seen him attacked from both the left
and the right for his strong convictions. But all of us who have
watched him not only in public, but as Hillary and I have had the
chance to do in private, know that in the very best sense, he stands
for life in America and for the potential of all of our children.
And for that, the United States should be eternally grateful to C.
Everett Koop. (Applause.)

Twenty-five years ago this year, Americans came together
for the very first Earth Day. They came together to make it clear
that dirty air, poison water, spoiled land were simply unacceptable.
They came together to say that preserving our natural heritage for
our children is a national value. And they came together, more than
anything else, because of one American -- Gaylord Nelson. His career
as Wisconsin's Governor, United States Senator, and now as counselor
of the Wilderness Society has been marked by integrity, civility and
vision. His legacy is inscribed in legislation, including the
National Environmental Education Act and the 1964 Wilderness Act.

As the father of Earth Day, he is the grandfather of all
that grew out of that event -- the Environmental Protection Act, the
Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act. He
also set a standard for people in public service to care about the
environment and to try to do something about it. And I think that
the Vice President would want me to say that young people like Al
Gore, back in 1970, realized, because of Gaylord Nelson, that if they
got into public service, they could do something to preserve our
environment for future generations.

In the 1970s, when a river was so polluted it actually
caught on fire, Gaylord Nelson spoke up. He insisted that Americans
deserved the safety that comes from knowing the world we live in will
not make us sick. He warned that our leaders should never let
partisan politics divert us from responsibility to our shared
environment. He inspired us to remember that the stewardship of our
natural resources is the stewardship of the American Dream. He is
the worthy heir of the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and the Vice
President's work and that of all other environmentalists today, as
the worthy heir of Gaylord Nelson.

Today as much as at any time in modern American history,
we need to remember what we share on this precious planet and in this
beloved country. And I hope that Gaylord's Nelson shining example
will illuminate all the debates in this city for years to come.
(Applause.)

Walter Reuther was an American visionary so far ahead of
his times that although he died a quarter of a century ago, our
nation has yet to catch up to his dreams. A tool and die maker by
trade, Walter Reuther built a great union that lifted industrial
workers into the middle class. But he always understood that the UAW
stood for something greater and nobler than a few more dollars in the
paycheck. So he fought for causes on the edge of America's horizon
-- from racial justice to small cars that would conserve fuel, and
compete successfully both here and abroad.

He wanted America to create an economy strong and supple
enough to convert from peacetime production to defense work and back
again without costing workers and their families their livelihoods.
As the journalist Murray Kempton said later, "Walter Reuther was one
man who could reminisce about the future." The union he led and the
future he built stand as a memorial to what is bravest and best in
the American spirit. Would that we had more people like him today.
We are honored that his daughters are here and that he will -- his
award will be received by his young grandson. Walter Reuther.
(Applause.)

Our homes, our cities, our neighborhoods, our
communities -- all these represent who we are. With the helping hand
of James Rouse, many of these places have come to reflect our best
values. In the 1960s, James Rouse saw a problem. Poorly planned
suburban neighborhoods did more than take away from the landscape,
they had a corrosive effect on our sense of community. So he did
something about it -- he conceived and built Columbia, Maryland. By
updating the colonial village for modern times, he gave a generation
of architects and designers a blueprint for reviving community all
across our nation.

A decade later, James Rouse turned to another monumental
task -- healing the torn-out heart of America's cities. He met the
challenge head-on. With Boston's Faneuil Hall, Baltimore's Harbor
Place and other developments, he put the town square, squarely back
into America's urban life. He proved that we could reclaim and
recreate our urban frontiers. Advisor to presidents, foe of economic
and racial segregation, champion of high-quality, affordable housing,
James Rouse's life has been defined by faith in the American spirit.
He has made our cities and our neighborhoods as beautiful as the
lives that pass through them.

He has shown us that we can build communities worthy of
the character and optimism of our people. I know that he has had a
special impact on our Secretary of Housing and Urban Development,
Henry Cisneros. And I can tell you that he has had a very special
impact on my life. Every time I see James Rouse I think, if every
American developer had done what James Rouse has done with his life,
we would have lower crime rates, fewer gangs, less drugs. Our
children would have a better future. Our cities would be delightful
places to live. We would not walk in fear, we would walk in pride
down the streets of our cities, just as we still can in the small
towns in America.

James Rouse has changed this country. And if more will
follow his lead, we can do the entire job we need to do in our
cities. Mr. James Rouse. (Applause.)

His name was William C. Velasquez, but everybody knew
him as Willie. Willie was and is now a name synonymous with
democracy in America. Through the organization he founded, the
Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, he nearly doubled
Hispanic voter registration, and dramatically increased the number of
Latino-elected officials in this nation. His appeal to the Hispanic
community was simple, passionate, and direct -- "Su voto es su voz"
-- your vote is your voice.

The movement he began here at home went on to support
democracy abroad in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico, and in South
Africa. From the farm fields of California, where he organized
workers with Cesar Chavez, to the halls of Harvard, where he taught
politics, Willie Velasquez was driven by an unwavering belief that
every American should have a role in our democracy and a share in the
opportunities of our great nation.

Willie Velasquez died too young. He was just 44 when he
passed away in 1988. But in his vibrant life, he restored faith in
our ideals and in ourselves. And no person in modern America who has
run for public office wherever Hispanic Americans live has failed to
feel the hand of Willie Velasquez. He made this a greater country,
and we're honored that his wife is here with us today. (Applause.)

It is not surprising that Lou Wasserman has devoted his
life to helping others to see. For it was his vision that led him
from the streets of Cleveland to the top of Hollywood, and his
perspective that inspired him to give so much back to a nation that
had given so much to him. Lou Wasserman helped to build MCA from a
small booking agency into a vast multimedia company. His feat
awakened the world to the infinite promise of the American
entertainment industry.

It also showed a new generation of American business
leaders that a company's success can be measured by the depth of its
values as well as by the size of its revenues. In honor of MCA's
founder, the eye doctor, Jules Stein, Lou Wasserman has made an
astonishing contribution to treat and to cure blindness. He has
devoted himself to strengthening the American community through his
role as citizen advisor to almost a half-century of presidents of
both parties, and with his support for countless humanitarian
efforts.

Never for a moment has he forgotten his roots, the value
of hard work or the importance of giving people in far, far less
fortunate conditions a chance to make something of their lives. The
story of Lew Wasserman is the story of the American Dream not -- not
-- just for what he has achieved, but far more important for what he
has given back.

I have met a lot of philanthropists and successful
people in my life. I don't know that I ever met anybody that more
consistently every day looked for another opportunity to do something
for somebody else, to give somebody else the chance to enjoy the
success that he had in life. I thank you, Lew Wasserman.
(Applause.)

Let me close, before we hear from the official citation
and present the medals, by saying that I think that all the people
who are here, were they to speak, would tell you that they did not
come here alone. They were guided by parents and teachers, by
neighbors and mentors. Many were inspired by other great Americans
who themselves at some time in the past received this very medal.

The miracle of American life is that this cycle can be
repeated over and over again with each succeeding generation; and
that with each succeeding generation, we make freedom a little more
real and full to all Americans. I ask all of you to think about
that. You couldn't help feeling, when you heard these stories, that
this is a very great country. And we do not have to give in to our
lesser selves. We do not have to be divided. We do not have to
achieve less than we can. If we will follow their examples, we will
make sure that in the next century, this country will be all it was
meant to be for all of our children.

I'd like to now ask the Military Aide to read the
citations as I present the Medals of Freedom.